An often engaging inspirational tale.
Retired journalist and radio broadcaster Jackson offers a debut mystery series-starter set in the music business, starring a middle-aged woman who rises to fame as a manager in Nashville’s Music Row.
Life isn’t treating Sarah Ann Boswell well lately. After her 26-year marriage to a high-powered attorney ends, she loses her job as vice president of community outreach for a charitable foundation, and things look bleak for her. In a fateful moment, she tries to end it all by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Lucky for Sarah Ann, she’s rushed to the hospital before reaching the point of no return. With her ever faithful prayer group and her two adult children supporting her, Sarah Ann manages to face her situation, and she begins to recover. Jill Edgerton, the founder of a Nashville music-management firm, happens to be recuperating in the next bed. She offers Sarah Ann her friendship and a job—two things that Sarah Ann can’t pass up. Shortly after hitching her wagon to Jill’s, she meets musician Jared Parson, who “has the looks of a young Vince Gill, hips like Elvis, and a voice to challenge Blake Shelton.” The women immediately sign him as a client and later produce his CD, which hits the top of the charts. But something isn’t quite right about the new country star. And when someone turns up dead, Sarah Ann knows something is very, very wrong. Jackson’s writing wraps the reader in Southern charm, channeling Southern Living and offering recipes reminiscent of those in Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible. When Sarah Ann isn’t meeting with her prayer group—which is apparently designed more for venting than praying—she’s attending the Grand Ole Opry or eating barbecued ribs. But although Jackson’s story is engaging throughout, its main plotline is delayed; although a minor mystery is alluded to in Chapter 8, the real one doesn’t get going until Chapter 26. Characters spend the remaining 11 chapters figuring out whodunit and encountering some overly helpful coincidences (including one involving a very clear fingerprint) and unoriginal motives (money and sex). But although the mystery isn’t challenging, it remains entertaining to the end.
An often engaging inspirational tale.Pub Date: May 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948679-05-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: WordCrafts Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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